The Future of Tablets in a Video Game Controller?
While the tablet war is just starting to heat up, the latest battle in the long running video game console war occurred last week. As almost every video gamer like myself knows, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, better known as E3, is the big gaming event of the year. It is where all the big players announce their latest and greatest games and hardware and is why every tech geek and video game nerd is glued to their twitter and live blog feeds during the event. Those fortunate enough to attend earn the ultimate in geek cred because they were there when it happened (visiting E3 is high up on my bucket list, along with sky diving, visiting all 7 continents, and meeting Britney Spears). This year’s E3 was a particularly exciting one because it marks the first time in almost five years that a new major console was announced: Nintendo’s Wii U. It was not only exciting because it was new, but because of Nintendo’s track record of innovation, the world, including I’m sure some in the tablet industry, were eager to see what cool things Nintendo had up its sleeve. Nintendo definitely did not disappoint.
Enter the new Wii U controller:
The centerpiece of the new console, the new controller, borrows a few ideas from everywhere while at the same time is unlike anything seen before. My first thought was “wow, its a gigantic Nintendo DS!” followed immediately by “no wait, the controller is a tablet!” It turns out it’s actually a bit of both. The new controller features a large touch screen which can be used as a secondary display to the primary TV screen. Pretty cool I thought, although I’ve seen this before in my old Sega Dreamcast and it’s Visual Memory Unit (remember when you could pick plays in NFL 2K on your controller? Revolutionary!) . It wasn’t until I saw video of the new controller in action that I realized the power of what it could do.
Check out this video of the New Controller in action
In the video, the player is playing a game, then switches to watching TV while the game is transferred to the screen on the controller. Next you see him holding the controller in front of him while using the controller’s screen as a targeting cursor for targets on the TV. In another demo, a player lays the controller with a golf ball on the screen on the floor then swing at the ball which launches it into the TV display. So the controller screen is not only a secondary display, but an extension of another device. We have convergence! I love the idea of two technologies interfacing with each other. This is when I started getting excited. But my geek senses really started tingling when I came to the idea that the controller is a tablet, but a tablet can be a controller. And then all sorts of ideas began popping into my head.
Think of using a tablet as an extension and controller for all sorts of devices. You could use your tablet to change channels or transfer the current show to the tablet to allow someone else to watch something. Perhaps you the tablet could interface with your oven so you could get a video feed of what you were baking, as well as temperature and timer information (as a baker, this would really be awesome). Or let’s say you were working on a slide show presentation on your computer to show a customer. You could swipe to bring the presentation down to your tablet, then when you are displaying the presentation to the customer, you could just swipe and transfer the display to a larger screen.
But wait! Little did I know that Apple has already developed a tablet/television control system. Apple’s AirPlay allows an iPad to interact with an Apple TV by streaming music or video. You could be watching a movie on your iPad and then tap the little AirPlay icon and have the video display on your television. I think this is a great first step on the road to convergence and would love to see its capabilities expanded. The catch is of course is that you need an Apple TV for this to work just as you’ll need a Wii U for the new Wii controller. One can hope that in the future that a standard will be in place to allow any tablet to interface with any compatible devices. Sort of like BlueTooth, but on steroids.
With the Wii U not due out in until 2012, it will be a while before we see if this idea fades away or if it catches on to become one of the next big things in technology. Certainly I would hope it becomes a reality, as I’ve burned too many things in the oven while working on a presentation and watching TV.
Skura Announces Strategic Partnership With TargetRx
Oakville, ON, May 2nd, 2011 – Skura Corporation, the leading provider of sales enablement solutions is pleased to announce a strategic partnership agreement with TargetRx and its innovative TargetAdvantage℠ solution. The mutual goal of this exciting partnership is to provide pharmaceutical and biotech companies access to valuable physician-level information, to significantly improve physician targeting efforts, and to improve overall sales and marketing effectiveness.
“TargetAdvantage takes prescribing data to the next level, focusing not on what physicians did but why they did it. We feel strongly that this is a key component in effective targeting, which is why we’re excited to team up with Skura. Their state-of-the-art Sales Enablement services reach a large number of clients that are serious about managing and nurturing interactions with customers. TargetAdvantage will add significantly to Skura’s ability to deliver personalized content and ultimately improve customer relationships,” Stated Craig Scott, CEO TargetRx.
“Our partnership with TargetRx represents a significant step forward in our goal to continually improve our Skura SFX users overall sales effectiveness.” states Jeff Wessinger, President of Skura Corporation. “Enabling Skura SFX users with instant connectivity to the TargetRx solution and its wealth of information in an easy to use and intuitive application will undoubtedly strengthen the user relationships with their targeted physicians.”
About Skura:
Founded in 1996, Skura has grown into an international company with satisfied customers around the globe. Headquartered in Oakville, Ontario, Skura also has offices in the US and Europe. Skura clients benefit from our unique value proposition as a provider of Sales Enablement solutions. As a recognized leader of software products and services, like the SFX™ Suite, Skura holds an envied reputation as an award winning provider of innovative sales and marketing solutions. To learn more about SKURA SFX™ and the entire SKURA SFX™ Sales Enablement suite please visit www.skura.com or contact sales@skura.com.
About TargetRx:
TargetRx provides pharmaceutical and biotech companies with unique insight into the true drivers of product choice and adoption for their brands, helping clients to confidently take the actions that will grow their businesses and help patients. Serving the majority of the top 30 pharmaceutical and biotech companies, TargetRx enables clients to significantly improve the launch of new products and indications, physician segmentation and targeting, creation of professional messaging and materials, and sales and marketing execution and effectiveness. All TargetRx solutions are powered by our AdvantageBuilderSM normative database and validated predictive models, created from capturing in-depth physician attitudes on the “four forces” of prescribing – product, payor, promotion and patient – on new launches, marketing campaigns and physician-rep interactions on over 500 pipeline and inline brands and modeling these attitudes against actual prescribing behavior. For more information, visit www.targetrx.com.
SKURA SFX Sales Enablement – Introduces SFX Connections™
Skura Corporation, the leading provider of sales enablement solutions, officially launched the latest SFX product suite application - SFX Connections™. The current market of enterprise CRM systems provide limited or no value to a field force sales rep. Existing CRM systems are more about managerial functionality, and less about what information can be accessible to a sales rep to make them more effective and engaging. SFX Connections™ allows for the management and nurture of a sales representative’s interactions with customers, clients, and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities.
The SKURA SFX Sales Enablement suite delivers sales content management (SFX Viewer™), personal and non-personal cloud presentation delivery (SFX Webflow™), and predictive analytics (Channel Mix Optimizer™) through intuitive and addictive interfaces. “Today we are extremely excited to announce the addition of SFX Connections to our SFX Sales Enablement product suite.” Stated Jeff Wessinger, President of Skura Corporation. “This application provides field force sales reps with easy mobile access to relevant account and customer information.”
“SKURA SFXsuite is a game changing all-in-one sales enablement solution that will help your organization hone value propositions and improve client relationships by delivering the right information, to the right person, at the right time, to make the most of every sales opportunity.” states Chris Skura, CEO Skura Corporation.
Dale Hagemeyer, Managing VP at Gartner Inc. has completed a FIRST TAKE – “Skura Seeks to Transform Life Sciences Market Through Sales Enablement”. Please visit www.gartner.com to access the complete article.
To learn more about SFX Connections™ and the entire SKURA SFX Sales Enablement suite please visit www.skura.com or contact sales@skura.com.
About Skura:
Founded in 1996, Skura has grown into an international company with satisfied customers around the globe. Headquartered in Oakville, Ontario, Skura also has offices in the US and Europe.
Skura clients benefit from our unique value proposition as a provider of Sales Enablement solutions.As a recognized leader of software products and services, like the SFX™ Suite, Skura holds an envied reputation as an award winning provider of innovative sales and marketing solutions.
SKURA SFX Mobile™- Develop Once, Deploy Many.
SKURA SFX Mobile™ will run on ANY tablet device – anytime and anywhere.
About Skura:
Closed-loop Marketing Solution Now Integrates with SaaS Model for Greater Benefits for Pharmaceutical Companies
By Kathleen Goolsby, Senior Writer – OutsourcingHealthcare.com
Imagine that you’re a pharmaceutical sales rep who is on the road, making on average 10 visits to potential customers (physicians) each day. The physicians only grant you a few minutes — sometimes even just one minute — to capture their attention toward your products. But you have an even bigger challenge — in the physician’s office or a clinic environment, you can’t connect your laptop PC to a network. Given that limitation, you will not be able to use certain software applications for marketing materials or for capturing data if those applications run on a hosted server that you access through a network. Jeff Wessinger, president, Skura Software Division, points out that Salesforce.com took some components of online offerings and made them available offline, but the offline version is not as robust as the version available when connected to the Internet and is not focused on vertical solutions.
A dramatic advancement in technology over the last 12 months now
enables the use of mobile applications without losing any
functionality when a laptop is untethered from a network. Now all
the capabilities and all of the application code can run while
disconnected from any network (similar to a BlackBerry); when the
user connects to the network, the code synchronizes all of the
information.
Another important development is the fact that Skura Corporation,
which has a very robust untethered closed-loop marketing (CLM)
mobile solution for pharmaceutical companies, has created a
connector into a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model (where all
the data is stored). So pharma companies can now take advantage
of the cost and convenience benefits of the SaaS model for the
CLM solution.
“Our CLM application enables sales reps to get more out of the
time that they spend with physicians and more feedback in
interaction between the rep and the physician,” says Wessinger.
How does it work? The application runs on a Tablet PC and allows
the rep to go through a multimedia presentation with the physician,
as opposed to just having a dialogue and some paper reprints. All
of the marketing collateral is available on the Tablet PC. The
information the rep presents to the physician, as well as the
physician’s feedback, get recorded and tagged back to the
physican’s profile. “The application then takes that aggregate
information back to the mother ship, so to speak,” Wessinger
explains.
“Through careful analysis of that data, the pharma company can
start to understand which promotional materials work with each
segment of physicians and then take that information and get even
better interaction with physicians who are of the same profile. That’s
what we at Skura call CLM,” says Wessinger.
How Ortho-McNeil Neurologics benefits from the Skura
Ortho-McNeil Neurologics, Inc. (OMN), one of the companies in the
pharmaceutical sector of parent company Johnson & Johnson
(JNJ), is using the Skura solution. Bill Whyte, director, Portfolio
Marketing, says the response from customers has been very
positive. “Sixty-five percent of them report that they prefer seeing
our marketing content in this electronic format compared to
traditional paper. The physicians also tell us that they believe the
information is more valuable because the reps show more
information than before and it’s packaged in a more digestible form
(video, etc., with relevance aimed specifically at the physician).”
He adds the solution allows the JNJ (OMN) sales force to get more
time with physicians to talk about products. “Because the
information is more captivating and interesting, they are willing to
spend more time with our reps,” says Whyte.
One of the greatest benefits of the Skura CLM software is a
functionality that ensures the sales rep downloads the most
recommended content for a particular physician, including clinical
messages on efficacy and tolerability.
Explaining this functionality, Wessinger uses an analogy of the John
Madden Football electronic game. “There are hundreds of defensive
and offensive plays that you can call as the coach, and the game
gives you about 30 seconds to pick from a menu of about 2,000
different options. But it also has a “Madden Pick” button to push,
which will pick from those thousands of options the best play for
you, based on the down and distance in the game, your opponent’s
strategy, the score, and other factors. It picks the play for you, and
all you have to do is play the game.”
“A sales rep can choose from our menu of content, or the rep can
push a ‘RepCoach’ button and download the presentation that we
know mathematically will be most effective with a particular
physician, based on the historical activity we’ve had with 50 other
doctors who are just like him. It even downloads the content in the
presentation order that has been proven to be most effective,” says
Wessinger.
The Skura application tags and traces the use of each client’s
marketing assets so that further down the line they can run
predictive models against it and figure out optimally how reps
should sequence and arrange the marketing messages for a
physician.
This innovative functionality and the software’s ability to optimize
physician responses to marketing content caused Gartner to rank
Skura as a “Cool Vendor in Life Sciences, 2008.” There are other
companies with products that tag and trace data, but Skura goes
further and makes meaningful business out of it.
Imagine how critical this is to a sales force in a company like Ortho-
McNeil. Headquartered in New Jersey, Ortho-McNeil markets
products to treat Alzheimer’s, epilepsy, and migraines. Within the
reps’ Tablet PCs are 300 multimedia screens of information that
they can show a doctor. In a typical sales call only lasting 60
seconds at best, they can show only two or three of those assets.
The Skura product ensures they show the two or three that are best
and most relevant to each physician.
“We decided to move forward with closed loop marketing because
the marketplace had changed,” says Whyte. “Our sales force has to
be more efficient at displaying marketing information and retrieving
data because of having less time with customers.”
Outsourcing to optimize the marketing effort
The Gartner Research Note on Cool Vendors in Life Sciences 2008
says “the days of engaging in all sorts of sales and marketing
activities are long gone. Powerful tools are available to optimize
these efforts…”
Companies like Ortho-McNeil outsource the Skura solution through
a “release management” offering, referring not to software releases
but, rather, to releases of the pharma company’s marketing content
to the field. Creative content changes frequently. In addition to the
application, the client pays a monthly fee (based on headcount) for
the people who manage the process.
Whyte, for instance, works with an external advertising firm to
develop marketing content, which he then turns over to the IT
department, which works with Skura to deploy it to the field. The
on-site Skura person works with the client’s brand team to figure
out how the content should be organized and presented.
The Skura team also helps its clients go through extensive medical
and legal reviews and, in the United States, helps them get the
content approved by the FDA. Skura personnel then publish the
new content releases or incremental changes to existing content
and deploy it to the reps’ Tablet PCs. Depending on the company,
this process can occur as frequently as every couple of weeks or
every month or two. Whyte says his company has enhanced its
content three or four times since it began working with Skura in
September 2007.
The involvement of the Skura team continues on the back-end as
they analyze the information for the “RepCoach” solution.
Whyte says Ortho-McNeil’s experience with Skura has been “very
positive” and not just from a technical perspective. When moving
toward deployment of the company’s initial content, they needed
extra resources to meet the timeline. “Skura provided the resources
we needed and demonstrated they wanted to partner with us,” says
Whyte.
The SaaS model
Pharma companies can now take advantage of the untethered
solution through a SaaS capability that Skura and Verticals
onDemand have enabled and not have to buy software. Skura
recently entered a partnering agreement with Verticals onDemand
to provide a hosted model for clients that prefer a lower-cost option.
Skura’s product that runs on a rep’s Tablet PC now integrates with
the back-end SaaS repository at Verticals onDemand. The hosted
model is exactly the same as the on-premise model. Clients pay on
a per-user/per-month basis for 38 or 46 months.
Lessons from Outsourcing Journal:
The marketplace has changed. Pharmaceutical sales forces
must now be much more efficient at displaying marketing
information and retrieving data on relevance to a particular
physician because sales reps now have less time with
customers.
Technology solutions now enable sales reps to present more
information to their customers, but it can be costly to
maintain the in-house resources to continually update the
content in such an application and deploy it to the field.
Pharmaceutical companies can now access a closed-loop
marketing mobile solution for their sales reps by outsourcing
with a cost-effective Software-as-a-Service (Saas) model.
Publish Date: July 2008
